**Originally Listed At $4500**

This item is heavy/oversized and will require 3rd party shipping. Please inquire about shipping cost prior to bidding.

Roman, late Imperial Period, Eastern Empire, modern-day Syria, ca. 4th to 5th century CE. A mesmerizing mosaic depicting a 2-stranded guilloche band framed by a T-shaped meander pattern and flanked by 2 undulating lines, all delineated in hundreds of vibrant stone tesserae. This mosaic may have been part of border decorations of larger figurative mosaic floors that once graced a house or church, of may have been part of smaller mosaic pavements adorning a hallway or walkway in a town or country house. This example is accompanied by a modern metal table frame allowing it to serve as a tabletop. Sure to astound all your houseguests, bringing all the opulence of the Roman Empire to your very own home! Size of mosaic: 44.5" L x 22.5" W (113 cm x 57.2 cm); of matrix: 46.25" L x 24" W (117.5 cm x 61 cm); height of table: 20" (50.8 cm)

Quite popular throughout the Greco-Roman world, the interlacing patterns seen in this example are likely Solomon's knot variants. The Solomon's knot is named for the biblical monarch Solomon who was known for his wisdom. In the study of ancient mosaics, the Solomon's knot is also known as a "guilloche knot" or a "duplex knot."

Mosaics (opus tesellatum) are some of our enduring images from the Roman world, appreciated not only for their aesthetic beauty, but also because they reveal what Romans chose to depict and see every day decorating their private and public spaces. In the Roman province of Syria, which encompassed most of the ancient Near East/Levant, mosaics seem to have developed as a common art form relatively late, with most finds coming from the 3rd century CE or later. Syria was one of Rome's wealthiest provinces, but it was also far removed from Rome itself and Roman culture was overlaid on enduring cultural traditions from Hellenistic Greece and the great civilizations that came before it. Antioch-on-the-Orontes (modern day Antakya, Turkey), was the capital of northern Roman Syria, and its excavations in the 1930s revealed more than three hundred mosaic pavements.

This piece was exhibited at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University, Salem, Oregon as part of the "Ancient Mosaics: Selections from the Richard Brockway Collection" exhibition that took place from September 26th to December 23rd, 2009. It was also published in the exhibition's brochure of the same name as Figure 7 on page 10.

Please note: items from Syria are not eligible for international shipping due to the US embargo on Syria.

This item is heavy/oversized and will require 3rd party shipping. Please inquire about shipping cost prior to bidding.

Provenance: private Vero Beach, Florida, USA collection, acquired before 2003

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#177250

Usable as a tabletop with accompanying metal table frame. Fragment of a larger piece with some chipping, fissures, and minor losses to some tesserae, but otherwise mostly intact with nice preservation of decorative program and liberal remaining pigments.